happiness of man, that loyalty is due from those living to those that
will come after; that civilization can only wax and flourish in a world
where faith is kept; that for nations, as for individuals, there are
laws of duty, whose violation harms the whole human race; in sum, that
stars of conduct shine for peoples, as for private men.
And so I hold that without tarnishing true honor, endangering
civilization present and to come, and ruining all hope of future
tranquillity, my country could not have refused to take up arms for the
defense of Belgium's outraged neutrality, solemnly guaranteed by herself
and France.
I believe, and claim in proof, the trend of events and of national
character during the last century, that in democracy alone lies any
coherent hope of progressive civilization or any chance of lasting peace
in Europe, or the world.
I believe that this democratic principle, however imperfectly developed,
has so worked in France, in England, in the United States, that these
countries are already nearly safe from inclination to aggress, or to
subdue other nationalities.
And I believe that while there remain autocratic Governments basing
themselves on militarism, bitterly hostile to the democratic principle,
Europe will never be free of the surcharge of swollen armaments, the
nightmare menace of wars like this--the paralysis that creeps on
civilizations which adore the god of force.
And so I hold that, without betrayal of trusteeship, without shirking
the elementary defense of beliefs coiled within its fibre, or beliefs
vital to the future welfare of all men, my country could not stand by
and see the triumph of autocratic militarism over France, that very
cradle of democracy.
I believe that democratic culture spreads from west to east, that only
by maintenance of consolidate democracy in Western Europe can democracy
ever hope to push on and prevail till the Eastern powers have also that
ideal under which alone humanity can flourish.
And so I hold that my country is justified at this juncture in its
alliance with the autocratic power of Russia, whose people will never
know freedom till her borders are joined to the borders of democracy.
I do not believe that jealous, frightened jingoism has ever been more
than the dirty fringe of England's peace-loving temper, and I profess my
sacred faith that my country has gone to war at last, not from fear, not
from hope of aggrandizement, but because she must--for honor, for
democracy, and for the future of mankind.
*Hard Blows, Not Hard Words*
*By Jerome K. Jerome.*
*From The London Daily News.*
In one of Shaw's plays--I think it is "Superman"--one of the characters
hints, toward the end of the last act, that the hero is a gentleman
somewhat prone to talking. The hero admits it, but excuses himself on
the ground that it is the only way he knows of explaining his opinions.
Times of stress and struggle, whether individual or national, afford men
and women other methods of expressing their views, and a large number of
our citizens are, very creditably, taking the present opportunity to act
instead of shout. There are the young fellows who in their thousands are
pressing around the door of the recruiting offices. They are throwing
up, many of them, good jobs for the privilege of drilling for the next
six months for eight hours a day. Their reward will be certain hardship,
their share of sickness and wounds, the probability of lying ten deep in
a forgotten grave, their chance of glory a name printed in small type
among a thousand others on a War Office report.
There are the mothers and wives and children who are encouraging them to
go; to whom their going means semi-starvation. The old, bent crones
whose feeble hands will have to grasp again the hoe and the scrubbing
brush. The young women who know only too well what is before them--the
selling of the home just got together; first the easy chair and the
mirror, and then the bed and the mattress; the weary tramping of the
streets, looking for work. The children awestruck and wondering.
There are the men who are quietly going on with their work, doing their
best with straitened means to keep their business going; giving
employment; getting ready to meet the income tax collector, who next
year one is inclined to expect will be demanding anything from half a
crown to five shillings in the pound. There are others. But there is a
certain noisy and, to me, particularly offensive man (and with him, I am
sorry to say, one or two women) very much to the fore just now with
whose services the country could very well dispense. He is the man who
does his fighting with his mouth. Unable for reasons of his own to get
at the foe in the field, he thirsts for the blood of the unfortunate
unarmed and helpless Germans that the fortunes of war have left stranded
in England. He writes to the paper thoughtfully suggesting plans that
have occurred to him for making their existence more miserable than it
must be. He generally concludes his letter with a short homily directed
against the Prussian Military Staff for their lack of the higher
Christian principles.
He has spies on the brain. Two quite harmless English citizens have
already been shot in consequence of the funk this spy mania has created
among us. The vast majority of Germans in England have come to live in
England because they dislike Germany. That a certain number of spies are
among us I take to be highly probable. I take it that if the Allies know
their business a certain number of English spies are doing what they can
for us at great personal risk to themselves in Germany. Until the German
Army has landed on our shores German spies can do little or no harm to
us. The police can be trusted to know something about them, and if any
are caught red-handed the rules of war are not likely to be strained for
their benefit.
*A Story from the South.*
From a small town in the South of England comes a story I can vouch for.
A couple of Boy Scouts had been set to guard the local reservoir. About
noon one sunny day they remarked the approach, somewhat ostentatious, of
a desperate-looking character. Undoubtedly a German spy! What can he be
up to! The boys approached him and he fled, leaving behind him the
damning evidence--a tin suggestive of sardines and labeled "Poison!"
That the gentleman should have chosen broad daylight for his nefarious
design, should have been careful to label his tin, seemed to the good
townsfolk under present scare conditions proof that they had at last
discovered the real German spy, full of his devilish cunning. The tin
was taken possession of by the police. And then the Sergeant's little
daughter, who happened to have had a few lessons in French, suggested
that the word on the tin was "Poisson," and the town now breathes again.
So long as the war continues the spy will be among us. I suggest that we
face the problem of his activities without blue funk and hysteria. The
men and women who are shrieking for vicarious vengeance upon all the
Germans remaining in our midst must remember that there are thousands of
English families at the present moment residing in Germany and Austria.
The majority of them, comparatively poor people, with all their
belongings around them, were unable to get away. I shall, until I
receive convincing proof to the contrary, continue to believe that they
are living among their German neighbors unmolested. Even were it not so,
I would suggest our setting the example of humanity rather than our
slavishly following an example of barbarity.
We are fighting for an idea--an idea of some importance to the
generations that will come after us. We are fighting to teach the
Prussian Military Staff that other laws have come to stay--laws
superseding those of Attila the Hun. We are fighting to teach the German
people that, free men with brains to think with, they have no right to
hand themselves over body and soul to their rulers to be used as mere
devil's instruments; that if they do so they shall pay the penalty, and
the punishment shall go hard. We are fighting to teach the German Nation
respect for God! Our weapons have got to be hard blows, not hard words.
We are tearing at each other's throats; it has got to be done. It is not
a time for yelping.
Jack Johnson as a boxer I respect. The thing I do not like about him is
his habit of gibing and jeering at his opponent while he is fighting
him. It isn't gentlemanly, and it isn't sporting. The soldiers are
fighting in grim silence. When one of them does talk, it is generally to
express admiration of German bravery. It is our valiant stay-at-homes,
our valiant clamorers for everybody else to enlist but themselves, who
would have us fight like some drunken fish hag, shrieking and spitting
while she claws.
*Incredible Reports of Atrocities.*
Half of these stories of atrocities I do not believe. I remember when I
was living in Germany at the time of the Boer war the German papers were
full of accounts of Tommy Atkins's brutality. He spent his leisure time
in tossing babies on bayonets. There were photographs of him doing it.
Detailed accounts certified by most creditable witnesses. Such lies are
the stock in trade of every tenth-rate journalist, who, careful not to
expose himself to danger, slinks about the byways collecting hearsay. In
every war each side, according to the other, is supposed to take a
fiendish pleasure in firing upon hospitals--containing always a
proportion of their own wounded. An account comes to us from a
correspondent with the Belgian Army. He tells us that toward the end of
the day a regrettable incident occurred. The Germans were taking off
their wounded in motor cars. The Belgian sharpshooters, not noticing the
red flag in the dusk, kept up a running fire, and a large number of the
wounded were killed. Had the incident been the other way about it would
have been cited as a deliberate piece of villainy on the part of the
Germans. According to other accounts, the Germans always go into action
with screens of women and children before them. The explanation, of
course, is that a few poor terrified creatures are rushing along the
road. They get between the approaching forces, and I expect the bullets
that put them out of their misery come pretty even from both sides.
The men are mad. Mad with fear, mad with hate, blinded by excitement.
Take a mere dog fight. If you interfere you have got to be prepared for
your own dog turning upon you. In war half the time the men do not know
what they are doing. They are little else than wild beasts. There was
great indignation at the dropping of bombs into Antwerp. One now hears
that a French dirigible has been dropping bombs into Luxembourg--a much
more dignified retort. War is a grim game. Able editors and club-chair
politicians have been clamoring for it for years past. They thought it
was all goose-step and bands.
The truth is bad enough, God knows. There is no sense in making things
out worse than they are. When this war is over we have got to forget it.
To build up barriers of hatred that shall stand between our children and
our foemen's children is a crime against the future.
These stories of German naval officers firing on their wounded sailors
in the water! They are an insult to our intelligence. At Louvain fifty
of the inhabitants were taken out and shot. On Monday the fifty had
grown to five hundred; both numbers vouched for by eye-witnesses,
"Dutchmen who would have had no interest," &c. That the beautiful old
town has been laid in ashes is undoubted. Some criminal lunatic
strutting in pipeclay and mustachios was given his hour of authority and
took the chance of his life. If I know anything of the German people it
will go hard with him when the war is over, if he has not had the sense
to get killed. But that won't rear again the grand old stones or wipe
from Germany's honor the stain of that long line of murdered men and
women--whatever its actual length may have been. War puts a premium on
brutality and senselessness. Men with the intelligence and instincts of
an ape suddenly find themselves possessed of the powers of a god. And we
are astonished that they do not display the wisdom of a god!
There are other stories that have filtered through to us. There was a
dying Uhlan who caught a child to his arms and kissed him. One would
like to be able to kiss one's own child before one dies, but failing
that--well, after all, there is a sort of family likeness between them.
The same deep wondering eyes, the same--and then the mist grows deeper.
Perhaps after all it was Baby Fritz that he kissed.
And of a Belgian woman. She had seen her two sons killed before her
eyes. She tells of that and of other horrors. Among such, of the German
lads she had stepped over, their blue eyes quiet in death. The passion
and the fear and the hate cleansed out of them. Just boys with their
clothes torn--so like boys.
"They, too, have got mothers, poor lads!" is all she says, thinking of
them lying side by side with her own.
When the madness and the folly are over, when the tender green is
creeping in and out among the blackened ruins, it will be well for us to
think of that dying Uhlan who had to put up with a French baby instead
of his own; of that Belgian mother to whom the German youngsters were
just "poor lads"--with their clothes torn.
And the savagery and the cruelty and the guiltiness that go to the
making of war we will seek to forget.
*"As They Tested Our Fathers"*
*By Rudyard Kipling.*
_Following is the text of an address by Mr. Kipling to a mass
meeting at Brighton, Sept. 8, 1914:_
Through no fault nor wish of ours we are at war with Germany, the power
which owes its existence to three well-thought-out wars; the power which
for the last twenty years has devoted itself to organizing and preparing
for this war; the power which is now fighting to conquer the civilized
world.
For the last two generations the Germans in their books, teachers,
speeches, and schools have been carefully taught that nothing less than
this world conquest was the object of their preparations and their
sacrifices. They have prepared carefully and sacrificed greatly.
We must have men, and men, and men, if we with our allies are to check
the onrush of organized barbarism.
Have no illusions. We are dealing with a strong and magnificently
equipped enemy, whose avowed aim is our complete destruction.
The violation of Belgium, the attack on France, and the defense against
Russia are only steps by the way. The Germans' real objective, as she
has always told us, is England and England's wealth, trade, and
worldwide possessions.
If you assume for an instant that that attack will be successful,
England will not be reduced, as some people say, to the rank of a
second-rate power, but we shall cease to exist as a nation. We shall
become an outlying province of Germany, to be administered with what
severity German safety and interest require.
We arm against such a fate. We enter into a new life in which all the
facts of war that we had put behind or forgotten for the past hundred
years have returned to the front and test us as they tested our fathers.
It will be a long and a hard road, beset with difficulties and
discouragements, but we tread it together and we will tread it together
to the end.
Our petty social divisions and barriers have been swept away at the
outset of our mighty struggle. All the interests of our life of six
weeks ago are dead. We have but one interest now, and that touches the
naked heart of every man in this island and in the empire.
If we are to win the right for ourselves and for freedom to exist on
earth, every man must offer himself for that service and that sacrifice.
*Kipling and "The Truce of the Bear"*
_STAUNTON, Va., Sept. 25, 1914.--On Sept. 5 The Staunton News
printed some verses by Dr. Charles Minor Blackford, an associate
editor, addressed to Rudyard Kipling, calling attention to the
apparent inconsistency of his attitude of distrust of Russia as
shown in his well-known poem, "The Truce of the Bear," and his
present advocacy of the alliance between Russia and Great Britain.
A copy of the verses was sent to Mr. Kipling and the following
reply was received from him:_
Bateman's Burwash, Sussex.
Dear Sir: I am much obliged for your verses of Sept. 4. "The Truce of
the Bear," to which they refer, was written sixteen years ago, in 1898.
It dealt with a situation and a menace which have long since passed
away, and with issues that are now quite dead.
The present situation, as far as England is concerned, is Germany's
deliberate disregard of the neutrality of Belgium, whose integrity
Germany as well as England guaranteed. She has filled Belgium with every
sort of horror and atrocity, not in the heat of passion, but as a part
of settled policy of terrorism. Her avowed object is the conquest of
Europe on these lines.
As you may prove for yourself if you will consult her literature of the
last generation, Germany is the present menace, not to Europe alone, but
to the whole civilized world. If Germany, by any means, is victorious
you may rest assured that it will be a very short time before she turns
her attention to the United States. If you could meet the refugees from
Belgium flocking into England and have the opportunity of checking their
statements of unimaginable atrocities and barbarities studiously
committed, you would, I am sure, think as seriously on these matters as
we do, and in your unpreparedness for modern war you would do well to
think very seriously indeed. Yours truly,
RUDYARD KIPLING.
*On the Impending Crisis*
*By Norman Angell.*
_To the Editor of The London Times:_
Sir: A nation's first duty is to its own people. We are asked to
intervene in the Continental war because unless we do so we shall be
"isolated." The isolation which will result for us if we keep out of
this war is that, while other nations are torn and weakened by war, we
shall not be, and by that fact might conceivably for a long time be the
strongest power in Europe, and, by virtue of our strength and isolation,
its arbiter, perhaps, to useful ends.
We are told that if we allow Germany to become victorious she would be
so powerful as to threaten our existence by the occupation of Belgium,
Holland, and possibly the North of France. But, as your article of
today's date so well points out, it was the difficulty which Germany
found in Alsace-Lorraine which prevented her from acting against us
during the South African War. If one province, so largely German in its
origin and history, could create this embarrassment, what trouble will
not Germany pile up for herself if she should attempt the absorption of
a Belgium, a Holland, and a Normandy? She would have created for herself
embarrassments compared with which Alsace and Poland would be a trifle;
and Russia, with her 160,000,000, would in a year or two be as great a
menace to her as ever.
The object and effect of our entering into this war would be to insure
the victory of Russia and her Slavonic allies. Will a dominant Slavonic
federation of, say, 200,000,000 autocratically governed people, with a
very rudimentary civilization, but heavily equipped for military
aggression, be a less dangerous factor in Europe than a dominant Germany
of 65,000,000 highly civilized and mainly given to the arts of trade and
commerce?
The last war we fought on the Continent was for the purpose of
preventing the growth of Russia. We are now asked to fight one for the
purpose of promoting it. It is now universally admitted that our last
Continental war--the Crimean war--was a monstrous error and
miscalculation. Would this intervention be any wiser or likely to be
better in its results?
On several occasions Sir Edward Grey has solemnly declared that we are
not bound by any agreement to support France, and there is certainly no
moral obligation on the part of the English people so to do. We can best
serve civilization, Europe--including France--and ourselves by remaining
the one power in Europe that has not yielded to the war madness.
This, I believe, will be found to be the firm conviction of the
overwhelming majority of the English people.
Yours faithfully,
NORMAN ANGELL.
4 Kings Bench Walk, Temple, E.C., July 31.
*Why England Came To Be In It*
*By Gilbert K. Chesterton.*
*I.*
Unless we are all mad, there is at the back of the most bewildering
business a story; and if we are all mad, there is no such thing as
madness. If I set a house on fire, it is quite true that I may
illuminate many other people's weaknesses as well as my own. It may be
that the master of the house was burned because he was drunk; it may be
that the mistress of the house was burned because she was stingy, and
perished arguing about the expense of the fire-escape. It is,
nevertheless, broadly true that they both were burned because I set fire
to their house. That is the story of the thing. The mere facts of the
story about the present European conflagration are quite as easy to
tell.
Before we go on to the deeper things which make this war the most
sincere war of human history, it is easy to answer the question of why
England came to be in it at all; as one asks how a man fell down a coal
hole, or failed to keep an appointment. Facts are not the whole truth.
But facts are facts, and in this case the facts are few and simple.
Prussia, France, and England had all promised not to invade Belgium,
because it was the safest way of invading France. But Prussia promised
that if she might break in through her own broken promise and ours she
would break in and not steal. In other words, we were offered at the
same instant a promise of faith in the future and a proposal of perjury
in the present.
Those interested in human origins may refer to an old Victorian writer
of English, who in the last and most restrained of his historical essays
wrote of Frederick the Great, the founder of this unchanging Prussian
policy. After describing how Frederick broke the guarantee he had signed
on behalf of Maria Theresa he then describes how Frederick sought to put
things straight by a promise that was an insult. "If she would but let
him have Silesia, he would, he said, stand by her against any power
which should try to deprive her of her other dominions; as if he was not
already bound to stand by her, or as if his new promise could be of more
value than the old one." That passage was written by Macaulay; but so
far as the mere contemporary facts are concerned, it might have been
written by me.
*Diplomacy That Might Have Been.*
Upon the immediate logical and legal origin of the English interest
there can be no rational debate. There are some things so simple that
one can almost prove them with plans and diagrams, as in Euclid. One
could make a kind of comic calendar of what would have happened to the
English diplomatist if he had been silenced every time by Prussian
diplomacy. Suppose we arrange it in the form of a kind of diary:
July 24--Germany invades Belgium.
July 25--England declares war.
July 26--Germany promises not to annex Belgium.
July 27--England withdraws from the war.
July 28--Germany annexes Belgium. England declares war.
July 29--Germany promises not to annex France. England withdraws
from the war.
July 30--Germany annexes France. England declares war.
July 31--Germany promises not to annex England.
Aug. 1--England withdraws from the war. Germany invades England.
How long is anybody expected to go on with that sort of game, or keep
peace at that illimitable price? How long must we pursue a road in which
promises are all fetiches in front of us and all fragments behind us?
No; upon the cold facts of the final negotiations, as told by any of the
diplomatists in any of the documents, there is no doubt about the story.
And no doubt about the villain of the story.